1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention generally relate to an image output apparatus, a method for outputting an image, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Portable terminals have a feature of enhanced security specifications. As an example of this feature, an application on a portable terminal cannot freely access the resource of the portable terminal. To maintain such a feature, a portable terminal has such a structure that driver software of each vendor cannot be installed therein. Therefore, with some early portable terminals, for example, it was not possible to install a printer driver and output a document to a printer from each application, which has been easily achieved by desktop terminals.
To solve this limitation, at present, two methods for outputting a document from a portable terminal to a printer are mainly employed.
One method is that an operating system (hereinafter referred to as OS) of the portable terminal offers print functions. Specifically, the OS of the portable terminal offers a library for printing as a framework or an Application Programming Interface (API). When an application calls the API, the API prints a document or image data of the application itself. In this case, since the OS of the portable terminal specifies a specific print protocol, the printer needs to conform to the print protocol. The print protocol includes a printer search protocol and a protocol for printing print data having a specific format, specified by the OS of the portable terminal.
The other method is that the application itself transmits print data directly to the printer. In this case, the application grasps functions of the printer in advance and transmits such print data that can be interpreted by the printer.
With either of the two methods, the user performs printing with the following procedures unlike conventional printing on desktop terminals. First, the user selects the print menu from the application on the portable terminal. Then, the user performs printer search to search for a printer connected on the network. Based on the result of printer search, the user selects a printer to be used for printing. Finally, the user sets print attributes and instructs execution of printing.
However, there has been the following problem in such printing methods and procedures. When performing printing, the user needs to select a printer. When there is a plurality of printers of the same model, selecting a suitable printer is difficult because a list of the result of printer search displays only product names of printers. Depending on the search protocol for printer search, printer search beyond a router is not possible. Therefore, even a physically close printer may not be searched for.
A technique for identifying a printer usable for printing is discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-169187. With the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-169187, a data transmission destination device displays on a printer's operation panel an information code indicating a device address. Then, by using a built-in camera, a portable terminal reads the information code displayed by the data transmission destination device. The portable terminal extracts the address of the data transmission destination device based on the read information code and then transmits data to that address.
However, the method for reading the information code by using the camera of the portable terminal to identify a transmission destination printer has the following problems.
When the data transmission destination is a printer, print functions are generally different for each product. In the conventional method, on the other hand, since a data transmission source reads only a data transmission destination address, the user may be unable to perform desired printing.